As enterprises increasingly rely on and store large amounts of data, data restoration has become increasingly important. Today, backup systems use a variety of methods to back up and later restore data that are quick and efficient. For example, a backup system may back up data stored on a storage array by periodically creating a snapshot of at least a portion of the storage array (e.g., a point-in-time representation of data stored on the storage array). The backup system may also back up (e.g., replicate and/or archive) these snapshots to a secondary storage array to protect against failure of the storage array. In this example, the backup system may enable a user to later use a snapshot or backed up snapshot to recover some or all data included within the snapshot.
Unfortunately, the ease by which the user is able to back up and restore data may create situations in which important data is lost because some methods used to restore data may be destructive. For example, using a rollback or a block incremental restore operation to restore data to a storage array from a snapshot may destroy data (e.g., files, directories, other snapshots, etc.) created subsequent to the point in time at which the snapshot used to restore the data was created. Accordingly, the instant disclosure addresses a need for additional and improved systems and methods for preventing unintended data loss during data restoration.